Los Toreador
by abomb30
Summary: What happens when Mike cranks up the AI to the max out of a sick desire for excitement? Not exactly what you would expect. A short one shot.


My name is Mike Schmidt. I think I'm going crazy.

Also I'm probably going to die tonight.

Sorry, let me rewind a bit. I'm a couple of years out of college. Two weeks ago—gods, has it only been two weeks?—I lost my job. Downsizing, they called it. Look at me, degree in Mechanical Engineering and I get downsized after eight stellar months on the job. So I went looking through the want ads in the paper. I was willing to take anything.

Maybe I should have taken some time to think about that. Because I got a job. I got myself a job as the night watchman at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. They said that all I had to do was keep an eye on the store for six hours a night. In retrospect, I should've known it wouldn't be that easy. Maybe the disclaimer on the ad about "dismemberment" should've given me a clue. Or the lousy pay. All this for $120 a week.

I get there night one, settle down into my chair in the security office, and turn on the fan.

Then the phone rang. Guy says he was the old security guard finishing up his last week there. I don't really think anything of it until he mentions that the animatronics move around at night. Okay weird, since most animatronics like Freddy and the gang are on wires and don't need to move, but whatever.

Then he says that they'll stuff me in a suit if they catch me. Even weirder, but whatever. Don't know why they would or why they would even be able to lift me. I mean, I'm no spring chicken. And besides, big deal, they put me in a bear suit.

Then he says that the suit's full of electronics and I'll die. Now I start to worry a little. I flip open the cameras. Nobody's moving on stage, and nobody does for a while, so I start to think he's taking me for a ride. Then I flip up the stage camera and Bonnie's not there. I start to cycle. I see empty rooms, I see a stage with an out of order sign in a room labeled "Pirate's Cove," then I find Bonnie backstage, just looking at the camera. Not moving or anything. Weird, but not enough to scare me. So they're on free roam, big deal. I flip back to the stage and there's no Chica. Freddy didn't seem to want to move, but I wasn't complaining. Nothing happens until after 4, when I catch Bonnie in the hall outside my door. I reflexively hit the button. Maybe phone guy was jerking me around, but I don't care to find out. Bonnie wanders off and the night goes fine after that. Nobody gets near me, 6 AM rolls around and I go home after the animals go back to the stage.

It wasn't enough to really scare me off, so I went back for night 2. And then 3. And then 4, when phone guy's message ended with him dead.

I'm not sure when I started going crazy. Foxy almost got to me on Night 3. Bonnie almost got me on night 4, three times. And the sick thing was, I started to enjoy it. I liked the thrill of the things getting close and almost reaching me. Dodging it just in time by closing the door. Must be like dodging a bullet. Night four the power went out. Freddy showed up and played music at my door. The clock hit six before he finished.

Night five I caught him almost getting in my door, since he started moving. I don't know what happens if they catch me, and I don't want to know. But Freddy came close.

Night six I worked myself into a steady rhythm. Close the right door. Check Foxy. Open the right door. Check both lights. Rinse, repeat, close doors as necessary. There were a couple close calls, and I ran out of power at 5:58, but I lived through the night. Got a bonus on my check too. Fifty whole cents.

This morning, I did some research. I thought I recognized Freddy's song, and then I remembered it came from a song I sang in college. It was called Manly Men, so I looked that up and found out that the bit I recognized was originally from _Carmen_, and it was about a Toreador, a bull fighter. Yeah, a person who gains glory from dodging his death at the hands of a dangerous foe. Like, say, a night guard who gets a sick thrill from stopping an animatronic bear from killing him.

Someone has a dark sense of humor.

So here I am on night seven. I got to my chair and sat down and then I noticed something. There was a program up on the computer in front of me. It was the program meant to set the AI autonomy levels on the animals. I blinked at it. Could it really be that easy? They were set by a simple-looking menu from 1-20. I almost burst out in maniacal laughter. I could set them all to level one and it would be like night one all over again. Only every night. I started to click them down to the lowest levels when I stopped. A voice in the back of my head said _but where's the fun in that?_

I shook my head to clear it. The voice didn't go away. _Come on, challenge yourself. How exciting is it to make them easy?_ I hesitated with my cursor over the AI settings. Then I clicked Freddy's level higher. _Yeah. That's it. You've been getting better. You can handle them at their best._ I found that I had set Freddy to level 20. _Exactly. Now set Bonnie to the same level_. I did. Then Chica. Then Foxy. Some rational part of my mind told me that this was a colossally foolish idea. That I was going to get myself killed. The rest of me didn't care. This was the hardest they could get. If I could handle this, then there was nothing I couldn't do. I could always set them lower tomorrow, after all. I changed all the settings to the highest, and settled back into my pattern.

Freddy's low laughter was a constant refrain all night. Bonnie showed up at my door probably a dozen times, maybe more. My heart raced and I felt energized. Foxy showed up at my door at 2:30 and 4:15. I nearly shut the door on Chica's head. Freddy spent most of the night waiting to sneak in my door from the corner around my right side.

And then things got really weird.

At 5:48, I stopped moving. I had about 5% power left in the generator. I wanted to make that last as close to 6 as possible. Foxy had been leaning out of his curtain and Freddy would almost certainly get in. But he didn't, and my power ticked down as the clock ticked on slowly until 5:53. As I saw my power display go from 1%to 0%, the impossible happened. I saw the barest hint of Foxy's arm start to lean into my room. I heard the beginning of a horrible, high-pitched sound. My heart leapt into my throat.

But then the power went out. And nothing happened.

Then I heard heavy footfalls on the west side. It could only be Freddy, coming that way to play his song and then, presumably, kill me. Closer. Closer. I heard the sound of two animals making contact of some sort. And then I heard…talking? I knew that the animals talked during the day, but I'd never heard talking before. Foxy hummed a song and Freddy laughed, but that was it. This wasn't that. This was clear, plain, perfectly articulate talking. One voice was high and almost jovial, the other low and, for lack of a better term, piratey. Like, full-on Blackbeard pirate accent, only without the typical pirate "arghs" and such.

"Oh come on Freddy, you said I could have this one."

"No, I said I'd think about letting you have this one."

"But you always get to do it after the power runs out."

"Yeah, I do. Because my name's on the building." _What in the world…?_

"Come on man, I was halfway in the room already. "

"But you weren't. And you're gonna make me run out of time at this rate. Plus, he can probably hear us."

"I don't care. I'm sick of this crap. Day in and day out you're the one who gets to do it after the power runs out. I only get my chance if they forget to close the door."

"So move more often."

"Oh yeah, says the guy who doesn't move until Friday night."

"Well I've gotta learn their techniques, don't I?"

"Well he still kept you out, didn't he? That's it; I'm going in there and getting this over with." _No, really, what the devil…?_

"No you're not, you degraded pile of filth."

"That's a cheap shot, considering you're the one who got me shut down 25 years ago. You know how boring it is being out of service for TWENTY-FIVE YEARS?!"

"Oh blah blah blah look at me I'm shut down woe is me all I did was almost kill some kid. Get a new tune."

"Ironic choice of words."

"Just get out of here Foxy. You're gonna make me run out of time." I started to panic. I was dead. That was it. They had killed me and in my last moments I was hallucinating that they were talking.

"You know what? I'm done. I'm not even gonna move at all from now on. Where are the other two? I want to tell them."

"They're back on stage where they belong. Because they actually follow orders." Something occurred to me. I had set their AI to 20. I had made them sentient. That must be it. Somehow the owners of this place had made fully functioning artificial intelligence. I started to lose my ability to breathe.

"Well you can shove it up your top hat. I'm out. Might even leave the building."

"We both know you won't do that. You can't do that. "

"Go screw yourself, Freddy."

"Yeah, just keep moving you putz. I'm tired of your whining anyway." The voice got lower, as if he was muttering to himself. "Can't find good help these days. Honestly. Well, back to work." I heard what sounded like a throat clearing and then "Okay, here we go." I thought I would die of a heart attack without Freddy's help. And then Bizet's most famous number started.

And got about two bars in before I heard my clock strike 6 AM. I swear I heard a sigh, and then the lights came back on. Of course, it may have been my own breath.

Freddy was outside the door with one hand on his hat and one out like he was trying to hold a microphone. The big grin was back on his face, but as I looked into his eyes, I swear he had been in the middle of rolling them. I walked up to him and nothing happened. He just stared at me. I walked past him into the hallway and I saw, in mid stride, with his hook hand in the air in a rough approximation of the classic obscene gesture, Foxy. I waved my hand in front of him. Nothing. On my way out, I passed by the stage, where Bonnie and Chica were standing, and I could swear they looked confused.

And then, as I realized that I was safe, I burst out laughing.

The next day, I got a pink slip. I was fired for "tampering with the electronics, general unprofessionalism, odor." Heh, between my panicking and the one time on night six I pissed myself, I could understand that. But I was alive. I was probably irreparably damaged and would need several months of counseling, but I was alive.

And I think I've had enough sick thrills to last a lifetime.

**So I wrote this story over like, 20 minutes after watching Markiplier's video of his compilation of Night 7 fails, because there's one time when Foxy's kill animation and scream starts and in the middle of it the power goes out and Freddy's music starts. Of course, Markiplier gets killed by Freddy at the end of the song, but I thought "what would that be like for Mike Schmidt if he heard Freddy walk up to start his song in the middle of Foxy coming in. And what if he heard them arguing?" So you got this. It's not supposed to be anything spectacular. Just a little one shot gag written late at night. Although I do have a concept for a continuation, but I warn you, it is extraordinarily bizarre.  
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